Jail Term Stands to Roil U.S.-Cuba Relations

The 15-year prison sentence given to an American in Cuba this weekend threatens to end a recent thaw of relations between the two countries while putting a harsh spotlight on a contentious covert operations program the U.S. has run on the island for years.

In recent years the Obama administration has offered a kind of rapprochement with Cuba, reversing tightened travel restrictions instituted by his predecessor George W. Bush and allowing Cubans to send more money to the island.

But Saturday's sentencing of Alan Gross, a contractor from U.S. Agency for International Development, throws recent progress into question, some experts said. Mr. Gross had been distributing Internetcommunications equipment on the island under a democracy-promotion program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development. That was illegal, according to a Cuban court, which handed down a harsh 15-year sentence for aiming "to destroy the Revolution."

The ruling—made over a demand by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to immediately release Mr. Gross—will decrease chances the U.S. will push more conciliatory measures with Cuba in the near future, experts said.

"Do we give them all these concessions in the hope that they will do something, or do we think in terms of real politics and try to tighten the screws?" asked Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuba analyst at the University of Miami.

For decades, the U.S. has tried to pry Cuba open to democracy through its economic embargo, aid to Cuban dissidents and even a 1961 invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs. But the government has countered the measures with heightened security and anti-American rhetoric. Recognizing the failures of past presidents to change Cuba, President Barack Obama even suggested during his campaign that he was open to an unprecedented meeting Cuban President Raul Castro.

The meeting never happened. But last year Mr. Obama began reversing years of increasing tightening restrictions on Cuba, allowing more airports to fly charter flights to Havana, raising the number of visits those with Cuban families could make to the island and boosting limits on remittances sent there by relatives. Cuba seemed to respond in kind: it began releasing dozens of political prisoners, long a demand of the U.S. as it pushes for democratic reforms there.

Cuba, in a deep economic crisis, is in the process of laying off as many as two million state workers, and reviving and expanding a small and moribund private sector. Revived trade, investment and tourism from the U.S. would go a long way to help Havana cope with its economy.

Despite signs of rapprochement, however, Mr. Gross's case lay waiting in the wings. He had been arrested in 2009 by the government for distributing devices that allowed remote Internet accesses, something that's highly-controlled in Cuba. Mr. Gross's family said he had done nothing wrong and was only working to improve Internet access to the island's Jewish community.

It also turned out Mr. Gross had been traveling to the island on a tourist visa and was distributing the devices as part of a covert program run by USAID to promote democracy supporters in Cuba. The year before, USAID had warned participants, including NGOs and outside contractors, that their work could get them in trouble in Cuba, and that they could even face jail time.

Philip Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute who has followed the case closely, said Mr. Gross's situation makes things more difficult between the two countries by highlighting the existence of ongoing covert U.S. operations on the island. But he said Mr. Obama may choose to continue ahead with changes in policy that he sees "in the national interest."

Mr. Peters said despite the fact that Mr. Gross was apprehended in 2009, the Obama administration hadn't taken control of the USAID program, which under George W. Bush had expanded from a small program that distributed pro-democracy aid in Cuba to a $45 million giant seeking high-tech proposals to aid activists.

Since Mr. Gross's arrest the program has come under attack in Congress as being wasteful and poorly-planned. Mr. Peters agrees: "It's a fools errand to send development contractors and match them against Cuban intelligence on Cuban territory," he said.

It's unclear yet what either country's next steps will be in Mr. Gross's case or between the two nations. On Saturday, the State Department issued a statement saying he was "unjustly jailed" and repeating demands for his immediate release. His attorney said that Mr. Gross was looking into options for an appeal.

Mr. Peters also said it was possible that Cuba will avoid further conflict and release Mr. Gross on humanitarian grounds having made an example of him in court. "I don't see it serves Cuba's interests to hold him a long period of time," he said.

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